Margaret Thatcher's legacy ... sport that revels in its new riches but only after selling its soul

Thursday 11 April 2013 09:27 BST

Hands up who wants to hear another sports columnist sound off about Thatcher. Ah, well, tough. It’s not every week that the most divisive, transformative politician of an era dies. And when that politician can also be said to have shaped modern sport in a way like no other, it’s worth pausing to consider her legacy.

The first thing to say about the late Margaret Thatcher is: thank God no football matches are going to be bothered by a minute’s silence for her this weekend. That’s not a party political statement. This isn’t the George Galloway column.

But I think it’s a thing worth celebrating that this weekend won’t be blighted by the embarrassing prospect of football crowds all over the country giving it the usual ‘minute’s silence’ rigmarole, only ramped up to Hate Force XI.

You know what I mean. Even when there’s a minute’s silence for a perfectly decent sportsman who has carked it, the routine is clearly established: the tannoy man asks everyone to shut up a bit; the referee pips his whistle; the crowd is quiet for about 13 seconds before some flatulent cret shouts ‘b******s’; several arguments break out; the respectable majority of the crowd attempt to cover their embarrassment by clapping; the clapping goes on for about 19 seconds; the telly shows a few cutaways of footballers looking awkward and bored; finally the ref puts everyone out of their misery by peeping again; the sport starts.

It’s terrible. And it’s clear that in Lady Thatcher’s case, this predictable litany would be combined with the disgraceful ‘ding dong the witch is dead’ stuff that has been on show for the cameras all over the country since Monday afternoon.

So I say again: thank God sport won’t be honouring — or more likely — dishonouring the Iron Lady this weekend.I’m sure, however, that plenty of sports fans — and particularly football fans — will be clicking their heels with glee at the fact of Thatcher’s death.

Over the past few days, the arguments have been well rehearsed, even if they are not wholly watertight. Thatcher ‘oversaw’ the darkest period in British football’s history: the years of hooliganism, stadium tragedy and death. Thatcher wanted to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Thatcher sold off the playing fields.

And yet. Isn’t it the case that elite sport today is one of the most obvious examples of Thatcherite principles triumphant?

Premier League football is the best case in point. The world’s richest and most bullish league — an export that exalts in its Britishness, its patriotism — is a business built on deregulated foreign investment, in partnership with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

It offers entrepreneurial kids from poor backgrounds the opportunity to become dazzlingly rich on the back of their own talent and graft.

Clubs have, over the years, morphed deliberately from organisations for and of the community into businesses driven by the profit motive.

And this is not just true of top-flight football — although it is most true there. Almost every sport you can think of, including those supposedly still governed by the amateur ethos, aspire to the goal of ‘professionalism’ — in other words, putting a price on something that was once supposed to be priceless.

Rugby, cricket, boxing, athletics, golf, tennis, whatever. Sport reflects the modern world, in which higher values matter but not as much as the cash value at the end of the contest.

The transformation of elite sport into a branch of the entertainment industry, governed by the rules of the market, has made modern sport exciting, distasteful, depressing, vibrant, amoral and entertaining. All at the same time.

In every sport I can think of, the price of a massive improvement in quality during the past 30 years has been an erosion of basic values.

Has it been worth it? Probably. Would most of us wish it another way? Probably.

And there is illustrated in microcosm everything you need to know about Thatcherism. It made things better but the cost was the sale of the soul.

Lady Thatcher was neither our saviour nor the devil. And her influence on sport was neither wholly good nor apocalyptically bad — no matter what pundits on either side of the political divide may try to convince you.

And it’s good that we won’t try to deal with that agonising moral ambivalence through the means of the forced sporting silence this weekend.

And as Forrest Gump once said, that’s all I have to say about that.

Jonny’s still got the roar talent

There’s something rather appealing about the idea of Jonny Wilkinson making the Lions squad to tour Australia. Wilkinson would bring experience, temperament and class, even if he’s not playing Test rugby any more.

Of course, picking him would mean leaving out three of Dan Biggar, Jonathan Sexton, Owen Farrell and Toby Flood: a hell of a big call for Warren Gatland to make.

But No10 is still the most unstable position on the team sheet. Could Wilko be worth an outside punt?

Refs really are as bad as the rozzers

From the annals of ‘Science Proving What Is Manifestly Deductible By The Application Of Common Sense’: researchers at Northumbria University have discovered that football referees have ‘little self-doubt’ and an ‘illusory sense of superiority’ — traits they share with other agents of petty authority such as sergeant majors and the rozzers. The study suggested this might be how they put up with crowds and managers abusing them on a weekly basis. Well, gee, professors: you don’t say.

‘Paint’ trophy is below Lamps

Last weekend’s papers were full of a Chelsea FC stunt in which several of the club’s best players (and Fernando Torres) were photographed covered in blue paint. It was like a cross between James Cameron’s Avatar, the Blue Man circus troupe and the Smurfs. Frank Lampard was notable by his absence from proceedings. And whether it was because he’s slinging his hook or because it would have been — in his agent’s words — ‘demeaning’, I couldn’t help feeling that he was best off out of it.

Complex issue is simple for Glazers

Plenty of head shaking met the news that Manchester United’s Carrington training ground is now being known by a sponsor’s title: the Aon Training Complex. “A waste of money: everyone will still call it Carrington,” was one response. Not outside Britain they won’t. I’ve been in the US all week, where most ‘soccer’ fans have as clear an idea of where Carrington is as they do Cannock or Colchester. It’ll be ‘The Aon’ overseas — which is where the Glazers know the real money lies. Smart move.